MechWarrior 4 Free Release Delayed By Microsoft

Vamman writes with a followup to news from 2009 that MekTek.net was going to release MechWarrior 4 for free after obtaining permission from Smith & Tinker, who licensed the MechWarrior rights from Microsoft. Now, almost a year later, the free release has yet to see the light of day, in large part due to Microsoft. Quoting: "... the Free Release is held up at Microsoft and it is unknown to us and our studio when the Free Release will be given the final go ahead. Due to the demands placed upon us by industry lawyers to release the Mechwarrior4 Free release we were forced to insure our studio at a premium rate to meet the Microsoft standard. Our insurance policy is a one year lease and we are unable to tap out of this policy until next fall. In addition to our insurance costs we are also struggling with our server costs. Currently, our server fund has run dry and staff and beta members are paying out of their pockets to help keep MekTek online. At this point we don't know from month to month if we will be able to stay online." Vamman adds, "MekTek has released a major update for their existing community, expansion MekPak 3.1. They are also promising their new expansion, MekPak 4, in a few weeks as open beta!"

Comments

Boo to Microsoft

[Orion Blastar]

I thought Microsoft said it would fully 100% support free and open source software including games.

Thank you for proving that you are jerks once again Microsoft by stopping this free Mechwarrior 4 release. It could have been good public relations and got you more business. Now we FOSS developers are going to have to speak against you for some bad public relations and hurt your sales and business and reputation.

Only Microsoft can beat Microsoft in this way and put themselves out of business by 2017, indeed!

Re:Fallout 3

[thetoadwarrior]

MS won't even allow developers/publishers give away content for their own games. Everything has to have a price tag on the 360.